The Days That Never Came
by opheliacs
Summary: Anthony is seventeen when they first tell him. Rory and Amy exchange glances while their son rakes a hand through his hair, blinking furiously. There's no reason for him to believe them. They know how impossible it all sounds. Telling him about the future and the days that never came can wait. {Drabbles about Amy/Rory post-Angels, their son, and their lives, through modern-day.}


**i.**

Rory finds them an apartment in Williamsburg—not for forever, just for right now, he says.

"Did you pick this neighborhood just because it's got your last name in it?"

"No, no, no, of course not. A bit, yeah. Maybe. Yes."

She plants tiny sunflowers on the windowsill.

**ii.**

Rory's only gone for an hour, but Amy somehow finds a typewriter. "What are you doing?" he asks, putting the milk in the icebox.

"I can't very well be a kissogram in 1938, can I? But you know what I can do? Be a writer," she replies, not looking up from her own fingers picking out the letters carefully, not having the luxury of a modern-day instant backspace.

"Like for the travel magazine?"

"Like stories."

"What sort of stories?"

In that one moment with the sunlight streaming through the tiny window she looks indelibly sad and much too old for her age. "I don't know. But it's the only way, isn't it? The only way to keep in touch with him. So that he can see us and know we're alright."

He knows she's right.

**iii.**

"I want to have kids," Amy says over breakfast the way people usually say, "I think it's a good day for a walk," or "Let's repaint the bathroom."

Rory is so astonished he nearly drops his fork. "But you don't like kids."

She glares. "That's not true! I'm just…not used to them. And I know I said I couldn't, after Melody, but…it's time, yeah?"

They agree that it'll be time as soon as the war is over. They don't pick names or a gender, agreeing that they'll know which baby is the right one. That's how, in 1946, Anthony Brian Williams becomes theirs.

**iv.**

They move to the countryside as soon as they've saved up enough money, her from writing novels, him from healing the sick. "I have a surprise," five-year-old Anthony proclaims, hands on hips in the new yard.

"Really?" Amy smiles. "I have a surprise, too!"

"Fancy that," Rory counters, hefting a heavy box onto the front porch. "I have one as well. All right, Anthony, you first."

From his souvenir tin of 'important things,' Anthony pulls out a small blackberry tart. "Mrs. Nolan made it. I ate the other one," he says sheepishly.

Rory winks at his son. "All right, Amy, now you."

She rummages through one of the boxes on the porch, pulling out a picture frame that she hugs to her chest. "I did this myself, so nobody's allowed to laugh." She levels them all with a warning glare before spinning the frame around, revealing a somewhat impressionist-like painting of the TARDIS.

Anthony gasps. "It's the blue box from my bedtime stories!"

Amy grins. "That's right! This can go in your room, if you'd like."

"Ahem, my turn!" Rory says, reaching into the box at his feet and holding a brand-new trowel aloft like a royal scepter.

Amy laughs til her sides hurt. "You're a real man, now, you are."

**v.**

He's seventeen when they first tell him.

"Wait," Anthony says, confusion creasing his forehead. "But I don't understand. Those stories, those bedtime stories you and Mom always told me…they're all real? The mad man with a blue box really exists?"

"Yes," Rory says, sliding the plate of cookies toward his son, "and we really did travel with him."

"He came to me when I was a little girl," Amy explains, "and he was my imaginary friend, my raggedy doctor, who came when I was praying to Santa Claus about a crack in my bedroom wall." She laughs. "And then one day, when I was older, he came back."

Rory and Amy exchange glances while their son rakes a hand through his hair, blinking furiously. There's no reason for him to believe them. They know how impossible it all sounds. But still, they hold their breaths and sigh with relief when he looks up at them and says, finally, "Okay. Okay."

Telling him about the future and the days that never came can wait.

**vi.**

"Dad, I think there's something wrong with my cucumbers, can you take a look at them?" Anthony asks at about the same time his wife, Katie, asks, "Amy, I just can't get the hang of this strawberry pie, can you help?" Amy heads toward the garden, Rory heads toward the kitchen, and they both get to their respective doors before looking at each other and rolling their eyes with a smile.

"Here, Dad, I've got a…hold on, where did you get that?" Anthony asks, knees in the dirt and eyes scrunched in confusion as a trowel materializes in Rory's hand.

"What sort of man doesn't carry a foldable trowel?" Rory smiles as if at some private joke.

"I've never even _heard _of foldable trowels."

"Put it on your Christmas list, then!"

"Dad, I'm forty-one," Anthony says exasperatedly, "I don't have a Christmas list."

"I do!" Amy cries through the open kitchen window.

Rory smiles smugly at his son.

**vii.**

It's Amy who comes up with the idea that they will die as their future selves are born.

There's no way to test if she's right, or if by traveling back in time, they have somehow unmade their future selves. But it is a comfortable idea to be able to predict one's own death and know it's far-off. They're known in their neighborhood for being as peaceful as a summer day. The Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Kennedy assassination, and every other major event in history leaves them completely unruffled. It's mystifying, but it's as if somehow the Williamses (no, the _Ponds)_ know that everything will be just fine.

And so they will.

**viii.**

Amy predicts—rightly—that Anthony will not accept the futuristic aspect of his parents' lives with as much grace as he had the rest of their adventures.

"You believed everything else we told you; why not this?"

"I don't know, Mom…the new millennium, _really? _ And you _really _want me to go to some village in the middle of Gloucestershire—wherever _that _is—to deliver a letter to my own granddad…in thirty years?"

"I guess the good news is that you have thirty whole years to decide whether or not you're going to do it…but your father would have loved for you to," she says, leveling her son with the steady gaze that always compelled him in childhood.

"I mean…do you have any _proof?" _Antony asks, throwing his hands out helplessly.

Amy purses her lips and squints her eyes, trying to remember anything important that happened this year—which is a bit beyond her reach, since she's not supposed to have been born yet and never did like history. Suddenly she remembers a tiny tidbit filed away in the back of her brain, one of her mother's favorite actresses. "Diana Dors will die later this year."

"_Who?"_

"You'll see."

In May, Diana Dors _does _die—and Anthony silently, despite himself, decides that in 2013, he will deliver a letter to his own granddad.

**ix.**

Anthony made the decision never to tell his wife or children about his parents' _real _lives. He has always been perfectly aware of how completely unbelievable the whole story sounds, and he doesn't want to set up his children for the disappointment of the Doctor not dropping into their lives and whisking them away. The older he gets, he's sometimes not sure if he believes it all himself. It's best to let his wife be unaware and let his children have normal lives.

So when Amy leaves his oldest girl, Felicity, her diaries, he inwardly curses for days.

Felicity is transfixed and doesn't come out of her room for two days, which means Anthony's deepest fears are reality and the diaries really do tell every single detail of Amy's life, including things that aren't even supposed to have happened yet. Anthony thinks he's safe for a bit, perhaps his mother didn't mention that he himself knew all about this, but then, almost offhandedly, Felicity mentions to him that she thinks she might like to go to England, near Wales…_someday._

**x.**

"Good lord, my _great-_granddaughter is here, too?" Brian asks.

Anthony smiles, still getting over the strangeness of having a granddad the same age. "Oh, yes. She's down at the pub. Didn't want to overwhelm you."

"I learned not to be overwhelmed by much of anything as soon as Rory met Amy," Brian says dryly, swallowing the sharp pain in his throat that is a reminder of the one thing that will never cease to be overwhelming.

**xi.**

It's the first time he's been back.

In human time, it's been less than a minute—or eighty years, depending. For him, it's been two centuries, and he's still not sure if he can bear it.

He picks his way in between tombstones and cherubs when he stops short and blinks hard. _No. It's not possible._

But it is. A redhaired girl is bending over Amy and Rory's tombstone with flowers in her hand. He can't stop the word that bursts out of his mouth. "Pond!"

The girl turns and his heart sinks. Not a girl, but a woman, probably fortyish, but he's never been good at judging ages. She has blue eyes and doesn't really look like Amy at all, but she smiles. "Felicity Amelia Pond, actually. Or Williams. My gran was never sure which she wanted to be."

"Gran…Amy was your….grandmother?" he asks.

"Yes, and you're the Doctor," Felicity smiles serenely.

His foot hangs there, suspended in space for just a moment. He strides toward her and kisses her on both cheeks with a laugh.


End file.
